The Obama administration joined the chorus of United Nations, European and Arab critics of Israel this week when it blasted the decision of the Netanyahu government to approve plans to build new housing in two Jerusalem neighborhoods and one in the adjacent suburban area known as E1. While the Obama administration did not join its European allies and other members of the UN Security Council declaring the building illegal and an obstacle to a two-state solution that must cease immediately, it did declare that the activity put peace “further at risk.” Israel’s critics make the argument that this sort of condemnation is heightening the country’s isolation and is to blame for the lopsided vote in favor of upgrading the Palestinian Authority’s status at the UN earlier this month. But the hypocrisy of these charges makes it easy to understand why Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is ignoring them.
The point here isn’t just—as we have repeatedly pointed out here at Contentions—that building in these areas of Jerusalem as well as in E1 wouldn’t prevent a two-state solution were the Palestinians inclined to negotiate with Israel to get one. The building within Jerusalem’s city limits in Jewish neighborhoods that were built decades ago, such as Ramat Sharon and Gilo, are in places that no one envisions being given to the Palestinians even in the most generous offer possible. The same is true of the new Givat Hamatos project. As for the E1 area in between the city and the suburb of Ma’ale Adumim, it, too, is in an area that Israel has always intended to keep. That is a point underlined by the fact that it was Yitzhak Rabin that put it under the jurisdiction of the adjacent Jewish town.
But the real hypocrisy isn’t the fact that all those countries as well as the Palestinians know very well that it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference to a two-state solution if Israel built 100,000 new homes in these places or none at all. It is the fact that these countries continue to ignore the fact that it is the Palestinians who refuse to negotiate and who continue to issue statements making clear their intention to destroy Israel without drawing much comment from nations that are supposedly so interested in peace.
After all, it was just 11 days ago that Khaled Mashaal, the head of the Hamas movement that already rules the independent Palestinian state in all but name, stated the following to a cheering crowd in Gaza:
Palestine from the river to the sea, from the north to the south, is our land and we will never give up one inch or any part of it.
Though the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas subsequently took issue with this declaration and then disingenuously tried to assert that Hamas has already recognized Israel (it hasn’t), the fact remains that the Fatah leader has signed a unity agreement with its Islamist partner that sooner or later will be put into effect. Do the U.S. or the Europeans really expect Israel to hand over more land to such an alliance? There is a broad consensus inside Israel against any such plan that explains why Netanyahu’s coalition is set to romp in next month’s elections.
Nor do the claims that Israel’s building plans make it harder for Abbas hold up. Were Netanyahu building new towns deep inside the West Bank, as the settlement movement would like him to do, it could be credibly argued that such plans would prevent the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. But why would that be true of building in existing Jewish neighborhoods on territory that would be part of the land swaps that even President Obama has acknowledged would be part of a deal that was based on the 1967 lines?
The problem here is not just that what Israel is doing is no obstacle to peace. It is that by joining in condemnations of building inside Jerusalem, President Obama and the Europeans are encouraging the Palestinians to believe that they will someday force the Jewish state to give up not just the West Bank but its capital too. An end to the conflict will only come on the day when the Palestinian so-called moderates like Abbas and extremists like Meshaal understand this. Far from Netanyahu being the obstacle to peace, it is the administration and its friends at the UN that are doing more to make that goal impossible than the Israelis.
President Obama is no friend of Israel, as he wants to appoint Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense shows. Obama is a true acolyte of the anti-semitic Reverend Jeremiah Wright. nIn any case, the Arabs called "Palestinians" are fakes, whose only raison d'être is to destroy Israel, for religious reasons. Calling these Arabs "Palestinians' is the consequence of Soviet propaganda, Gamal Nasser, ruler of Egypt, and the Soviet Union, haters of Jews, having invented the "Palestine Liberation Organization" (P.L.O.) in Cairo in 1964. The P.L.O. came to fame when it massacred the Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, and its members then became known as "Palestinians." nIn fact, the name "Palestine" meant "land of the Jews," and "Palestinian" meant "Jew" since the Roman Emperor Hadrian, in 135 A.D., after defeating the last Jewish rebellion under Bar Kochba, changed the name of Judea to "Palestina" to forever eradicate all memory of Judea and the Jews. (He outlawed Judaism and renamed Jerusalem "Aelia Capitolina," his gens name being "Aelius.") Great Britain, after World War I, was awarded the "Palestine Mandate" to be "the homeland of the Jews." nThe Arabs now calling themselves "Palestinians" deserve nothing from Israel. There are plenty of Arab states. And in the interest of language accuracy, the so-called "West Bank" is the historic Judea and Samaria, whence Jews came.
Language correction: "President Obama is no friend of Israel, as he wants to appoint Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense shows." should read "President Obama is no friend of Israel, as his wanting to appoint Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense shows."
Missiles and genocidal plans by its enemies – no obstacle to peace. n nJewish building plans – big obstacles. n nWhat would a Martian landing on Earth and seeing this think?
he'she'it might think that the more overt form of hostility and war comes from Gaza, but that the Israelis are building the more effective one with their resettlement of their citizens outside their borders and their transfer of resources.
what borders? n nIsrael has no borders with any so call Palestine arab state-you must be referring to cease fire lines. n nThe arabs refuse to negotiate borders. They have waited and manipulated and remained adamant in their refusal to officially negotiate borders. Now they want to have borders imposed on Israel by the UN or whoever, and they can claim no participation and feign resignation and conditional acceptance until they continue fighting to achieve from river to sea for the ummah.
The "Palestinians" gain from the prejudice of low expectations. The Israelis lose for the prejudice of high expectations. Altogether, an extreme in double standards.
The Israelis are burdened with antipathy by the world, no matter what they do. n
Extending the logic of the post… Israel should have no problem with the PA building new settlements in the West Bank in areas that most likely would be part of a land swap deal. That would mean displacing some Israeli settler outposts, but since those outposts would be part of a land swap the PA might as well build there now. No problem, right? n
After the Palestinians attempted to remove the Jews by bloody force, including in the second intifadah blowing up pizza parlors and bar mitzvas, and sniping at Jews in East Jerusalem from their nearby villages we are talking about the logic of war. They pissed the logic of their rights away.
FYI, there is plenty of Arab building in the dsiputed territories, but for some reason it never gets condemned as endangering a peace settlement, or as changing facts on the ground.
??? n noverstating n nThe point of this is doubtful. n nThe Greeks may have used to refer to Israel getting it from the Hebrews but by the 5th century the Hebrews had been using it forever to refer to the original possessor of portions of the land, not themselves, but the Philistines. That's what the Hebrew refers to, however known to these relatively late writers–who post-date the circulation of the term by about 1,000 years and counting. n nCheck out a biblical concordance: over and over: n nu05e4u05b0u05bcu05dcu05b4u05e9u05b0u05c1u05eau05b4u05bcu05d9 nPelishti (814b); from 6429; inhab. of Philistia:— nNASB – Philistine(33), Philistine's(2), Philistines(250), Philistines'(2).
I found your reply through most embarrassing means… not on my Intense Debate page, but yours (figuring it to be to me), after wondering how your ID rating had fallen so far. (I am, of course, a subscriber of yours.) n nI can't link to the article as I read it (for I accessed it through an academic database), but here is the article if you want to buy access to it. (Or, if you have access to an academic database, well, you should have the particulars to easily find it.) n nThe fact (if such it is) that you presented may be either irrelevant or a boon to the argument that I've shown deference to. After all, Jacobson actually says the name may have originated in PUN, the vaunted correlation between "Palestine" and "Pelishtim" actually being modest support for this theory (as Jacobson also argues) if indeed (as Jacobson also argues) the Greeks had such a taste for punniness. As far as other Greek tendency goes, Jacobson refers to the Septuagint, both to the actually designation of the Philistines there, and to the tendency to translate place names (instead of transliterating them): n n"Now let us turn to the philological problem. The earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible, into Greek, is known as the Septuagint. The work was done in Alexandria beginning in the third century B.C.E. If the Greek Palaistinoi were derived from the Hebrew Peleshet (Land of the Philistines), we would have expected that Peleshet would appear in the Septuagint as Palaistinoi. The Septuagint translators clearly had this Greek word available: As we have seen, it was used as early as Herodotus. But the Septuagint translators did not make use of this word. Instead, they referred to the Pelishtim the people we call Philistines, as the Philistieim, while the Hebrew Peleshet is rendered as Ge ton Philistieim (literally, the "Land of the Philistines"), rather than a word like Palaistine(careted).11 n nAnother interesting point: The Septuagint translators tended to translate place-names rather than transliterate them, especially where familiar Greek names existed. (In the transliteration, Grecisms would be substituted where appropriate, as Paris becomes Parigi in Italian or Beijing once became Peking in English). Thus, for example, the Septuagint translates Yam Suf (the Red Sea) as Erythra ThaLassa, Greek words meaning "Red Sea." Likewise, Mitzraim (Egypt) is rendered not with a transliteration of the Hebrew but with the Greek Aigyptos. That the Septuagint school of translators did not do the same in the case of the Hebrew Peleshet (the land) and Pelishtim (the people) is indicated by the fact that the term they used, Philistiein has a Semitic, rather than a Greek, ending. In other words, Philistieim is a transliterated term from the Hebrew for the Philistine people. Palaistine and Palaistinoi must therefore signify something else." n nForgive the format (or the lack, thereof, of the original) of the quoted text, I pray. I chose the first result off this "academic database," it and I not necessarily being the most sophisticated.
i reestablished the password–or people don't like what i have to say–but I think Jacobson makes my point. I just don't see a pun in what the author describes as transliteration from Hebrew into an accessible Greek form by Herodotus–i.e., for Herodotus it meant "land of the Philstines"–he does nothing to convincingly suggest that Herodotus must have been doing something else because his coinage, his Greek usage for a Greek audience was not duplicated by the Hebrew translators.
On the root forms PLST and PLST'M–the latter for the "Philistines" and the other" the land"–in the paragraph previous to that usage, "the land" is "Land of the Philistines"–still Philistines all the way–the professor seems to be embellishing cantillation jots and tittles, heaps of them, on coz the Sept. translators kept the original root for “Philistines”–literally reusing the Semitic form–and then instead of reusing the original Semitic root form for the land of the Philistines, PLST, reused the Semitic root form for “Philistines” and tacked on the Greek "land of" or "ge ton"
okay, from which follows what exactly? So here in the Septuagint as in the Hebrew scriptures for both Land of the Philistines and the Philistines, it’s the Philistines all the way and in translation the Jews went with a Semitic loaner into the Greek instead of transliteration OR use of indiginous Greek terms n n–but what Greek words were there for them? All they had was a prior term that was nothing more than their own Semitic Hebrew expression once removed. n
It's as if translating into Hebrew auto mechanics guide I must use "brakesiim" instead of "breaks"–the Hebrew is using a loaner transliteration from the English to begin with, I might use conventional English forms. So the Sept. decides not to use a word for Land of the Philistines that is a Greek echo of the original and there is no other Greek equivalent.
So the Sept. translators didn't use the second-hand at one remove transliteration from Hebrew to Greek hardly demonstrates Herodotus didn't. And there's nothing that I see to suggest that the term ever meant anything than "land of the Philistines" regardless as to whether foreign authors simply took it as a geographical term. And the Biblical translations are not referring to the overall land of Israel in its Jewish patrimony as the equivalent of "Israel".
yup. if no one ever questions anything that Israel does, the world will be all peace and unicorns and butterflies will emerge from Tobin's sweet-smelling sphincter. n n n
"unicorns and butterflies will emerge from Tobin's sweet-smelling sphincter" nWhich would still make it more valuable and less obnoxious than what comes out of the bash-Israel-first space between your ears.
now you join cloture with these interminable references to points southwards of our waist. n nwhat gives? Nathanael's West The Dream Life of Balso Snell this is not. n ntime for Jews to emerge from the Trojan's horse anus and leave the proctological and scatalogical humor to our very own Hitler Youth n njust saying
Point taken; perhaps I should not have quoted Dub's words back to him. For the record I have called him out before on his use of that kind of language.
well, I replied to him–I took it that you were appropriately calling him out on it…that's how this old pooch figured it
What I find objectionable, is the willfully obtuse and cowardly positions put forth by the likes of J Street.
J Street has the unmitigated audacity to describe themselves as a pro Israel organization, when in fact it is a front organization for Israel’s detractors. Whether it be ‘peace now’, The PA,Russia, The US State Department or the eu, the shared agenda is designed to weaken Israel and place her into a position which would obviously evolve quickly into one in which Israel would disappear. They support the so called Saudi Peace Plan, which can be summed up as follows. Israel will first place itself into a position in which it can not defend itself and will be dependant upon it’s neighbors for it’s security. Then and only then Israel will be recognized, whatever that means. It means, when Israel is destroyed, therre will be peace. It is beyond ludicrous. Nevertheless, The US State lives by trhis credo/crudo.
The present gov’t of Israel gave peace a chance and it continues to. However, it can not be expected to stop living to accomodate it’s enemies cravings for it’s demise.
There must be a clear message to the terrorists:
If you are interested in peace, it is your burden to prove it. There is a price to pay for refusing to negotiate in good faith. These lessons began in 1948 and will continue until YOU stop them by ending the conflict, FOR GOOD. NO MORE TRICKS.
Elie, that was a truly absurd bit of nonsense. n nsaying that the US State dept is intent upon weakening Israel so that it will quickly disappear proves you to be rather less than sane.
Land theft continues but the "critics" of Israel are the culprits? Got bridges for sale? You have fallen into grotesque self-parody.
"stolen" from who? I was over there and took a look at the rocks–nobody's name was on them. when the palestinians were trying to starve the Jews out of western jerusalem, having expelled them from the eastern portion i didn't hear any objections from the likes of you. n nthey tried to kill the jews in wwii, before, after, to this day and they lost. n nthat has consequences–the attempted murder and the failure. n nget used to it. n nnot all jews bare the neck.
there's a little bit of difference between fighting for what's yours and taking more than that, besht. n nsome folks think that Israel should thrive but that taking the land and water of the West Bank isn't the way to go about it.
Stealing water from the west bank is a frequent and false charge by the Arabs and their apologists. Next you can tell us about Israel cutting down olive trees and infecting Arabs with AIDS. n nAnd people who know a lot more than either of us about international law have concluded that Israel's right to the 'west bank' (as Arabs, gentiles and Israel-haters like to call it) is at least equal and probably superior to that of the Arabs.
ah, but the Palestinians didn't want to recognize what the Jews had at all–hence the riots, pograms, tete e tetes with Hitler, the blood lynchings, the refusal to doctrinally separate West Bank from Israel proper, the savage bloody mindedness of the second intifadah–after the second intifadah the original decision to occupy the West Bank has disappeared from the rear vfiew mirror–notwithstanding the Palestinian yearning to make themselves whole–for thqt is the source of the problem–the problem is they have demonstrated one to many times that for them integrity cannot be reached by mere resotration or re-partition–so the arguments over the extent of partiton have been rendered essentially moot–the calcuations are different. n nEast Jerusalem sectors *were* Israel's–West Jerusalem *was* Israel's–taking what was theirs was not the Palestinians deal and very few people are of a mind to debate the history of the conflict and the fine points of hypothetical international law as if they were poor blameless victims only and solely interested in recovering lost assets. n nIf necessary they will be screwed over more determinatively than in their past efforts to extirpate a Jewish presence in the Middle East.
It's more than a doctrinal refusal; the PLO Charter, written in 1964, says that the lands that the Partition Plan set aside for a Palestinian state are not the Palestinian homeland but rather legitimate parts of the Arab states that seized those territories in the 1948 war, and that the Palestinian homeland is what we now view as pre-1967 Israel. It was not until Israel recaptured the "west bank" in 1967 that the terrorists and their supporters started claiming that land outside the Green Line was the homeland of the Palestinians.
well, yeah, they'll take the West Bank of the Jordan too and head westward–but river to sea may have always been the original conzeptia–pre 1967 mums-the-word discretion and coalition building and strategery might just have dampened the dream of Greater Palestine–the uprising of 1970 to overthrow the Hashemites fit in–though with the East German trained Comintern internationalism they could play that game too. n nand everytime you turn around some moonbeam group of ghost dancing punks in their artillery shell proof ghost kafeyas pose before the cameras to announce their next big jihad. n nreal work is sooooo boring n nbut what was it, last year? that the PLO bureaucracy repeated that refugee Palestinians on the West Bank still in camps there would not even be given citizenship in an independent Palestine but would be resettled in Israel–so what's the point of stressing?
of course, they are wrong and ugly and their actions vile, but they've been beaten to pulp and are occupied. n nthe present problem is how to structure the future. the occupation has to end for the good of everyone, including Israelis.
i wait for the mid-western states to give back their land to the plains indians… n nget a grip
Careful, Grumpy, you're starting to sound like Dub.
if the dub grumpy duo take on the scat stylings of cloture it is going to get grim…six pointed stars from heaven
chas v'sholom
Jews all over the world have so much!!! Why do they need a country? The West and the Muslims do not want the Jews to have their own country.
The real hypocrisy is that these very nations that are condemning Israel for building or planning to build in E1 are the very countries that voted yes or abstained from voting at the UN on the PLO’s upgrade – which contravened the very accords those countries hold near and dear.
C-1 is very very ambiguous. Israeli law applies to its residents and the Minister of Defense actively mediates building policy with the Interior Minister. Moreover the world treats the eastern, northern and southern sectors across the Green line of annexed, Israel sovereign Jerusalem, as being reprehensible. This has consequences. As with its nuclear capability Israel prefers ambiguity but the Palestinian refusal to recognize borders and the "international community"'s refusal to ignore the history of the expulsion of Jews from territory that ended up on the eastern divide of the Green line guarantees that the current diplomatic consensus fixating on the Green line as Israel's future political border must and will be resisted by future Israeli governments.
Barton Fink very much in the spirit and highly recommended
no, besht, the world does not treat the annexation of Jerusalem as reprehensible. the world treats it as legally non-binding but most of the world doesn't really even object to the annexation itself, but the world does not like some of the actions designed to drive out Palestinians born and living in Jerusalem. n n
I've enjoyed it all three times that I've seen it. n nbut prefer Miller's Crossing. n n
I understand what you're pointing to, Bread, but be assured that I read Tobin's post. n nIt's quite true that Hamas is far, far more an obstacle to peace, but Tobin's claim that Israel's announced building plans aren't "an obstacle" to Abbas and that the US president and the Europeans shouldn't criticize them…is total crap